Torment featured 143 black-bordered cards (55 commons, 44 uncommons and 44 rares). Its expansion symbol represents a nightmare, to evoke the set’s dark themes and 'dementia summoning'.[3]Torment was notable for its shift from the conventional distribution, and equal focus, on all the five colors of Magic to a particular thematic and mechanical emphasis on black. Consequently, from the set's development on, it was referred to as the "black set". [4][5] To account for the over-representation of black, the total number of green and white cards was accordingly reduced; there are 40 black cards, 28 blue and red, 21 green and white, and there are 5 nonbasic lands. The following expansion, Judgment, would later correct the inequality of black, green, and white cards.[6] In addition to there being more black cards, the general level of power of black cards was comparably more powerful than those of other-colored cards.[7]

Torment was noted for featuring a four-card cycle of Tainted lands, which could add black mana or mana of another color if their controllers controlled a Swamp and were the only lands in the expansion. The original basic land artists of Odyssey were commissioned to do darker versions of their original basic lands.[8]

Chainer's Torment presents the tale of Chainer, a Cabal dementia summoner, discovering the Mirari and rising through the ranks of the Cabal, rivaling the Cabal Patriarch himself, and his subsequential fall. [11] Meanwhile Kamahl befriends Chainer, with whom he trains as a pit fighter and fights as an ally within the pits, and Laquatus plots to gain control of the Mer Empire for himself.

Torment's release marked a tremendous power boost to the color black. The "Swamp Rewards" cards along with Chainer's Edict and Nantuko Shade were incredibly potent in tournament play, spawning the MonoBlack Control archetype that could destroy its opponent's creatures, hand, and life total with large Cabal Coffers-fueled spells. Previously, control decks were almost synonymous with blue counter-based control decks.

Torment continued the keywords introduced in Odyssey, Flashback and Threshold, and also introduced Madness, which allowed players to play cards as they were being discarded, at a reduced cost. [13][14]

Non-keyworded themes and mechanics included Nightmare Horrors (or, simply, Nightmares), each of which had a comes-into-play and leaves-play ability.[15][16] These creatures could exile a permanent of a specific type from play until they left play. The abilities of most of these Nightmares (exceptions being Soul Scourge and Laquatus's Champion) could be manipulated in a way that the exiling of permanents was essentially until the end of the game, by triggering the leaves-play ability as the Nightmare entered play and manipulating the order of abilities on the stack.

"Disorder" enchantments: five uncommon enchantments with activated abilities requiring either the discard of a card or the sacrifice of the enchantment for an effect. Each "disorder" enchantment is named after a mental disorder or condition — Hypochondria, Compulsion, Mortiphobia, Pyromania and Narcissism.

Black Dreams: while white, blue, red, and green each received one (rare) Dreams spell, black received three, one per rarity (to date). Each black Dreams spell has a different cost from other black Dreams and non-black Dreams spells; but, common to Dreams spells, they require the discard of any number of cards for a scalable effect — Restless Dreams, Sickening Dreams, and Insidious Dreams.

Strength of Isolation (white) and Strength of Lunacy (black) are both auras that confer a strength/toughness boon (respectively, +1/+2 and +2/+1) and protection from the opposite color. In addition to this, both of these auras have a Madness cost of C.

Torment has four bicolored theme decks. As the set is black-heavy, fittingly, one of the colors of each of the four theme decks is black. Furthermore, it is noteworthy that two copies of each of the "tainted lands" cycle is included in each of the theme decks.

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